The Matarese Circle (27 page)

“He owned most of it, signore. He was good to the people who lived on his lands.”

“Naturally. And we would like to grant him a place in Corsica’s history. I’m not sure I know where to begin.”

“Perhaps.…” The innkeeper had leaned back in the chair, his eyes leveled, his voice strangely noncommittal. “The ruins of the Villa Matarese. It is a clear night, signore. They are quite beautiful in the moonlight. I could find someone to take you. Unless, of course, you are too exhausted from your journey.”

“Not at all. It was a quick flight.”

He had been taken further up into the hills, to the skeletal remains of a once-sprawling estate, the remnants of the great house itself covering nearly an acre of land. Jagged walls and broken chimneys were the only structures still intact. On the ground, the brick borders of an enormous circular drive could be discerned beneath the overgrowth. On both sides of the great house, stone paths sliced through the tall grass, dotted by broken trellises; remembrances of lushly cultivated gardens long since destroyed.

The entire ruins stood eerily on the hill in silhouette, heightened by the backwash of moonlight. Guillaume de Matarese had built a monument to himself and the power of the edifice had lost nothing in its destruction by time and the elements. Instead, the skeleton had a force of its own.

Vasili had heard the voices behind him, the young boy who’d escorted him nowhere to be seen. There had been two men and those opening words of dubious greeting had been the beginning of an interrogation that had lasted more than an hour. It would have been a simple matter
to subdue both Corsicans, but Taleniekov knew he could learn more through passive resistance; unschooled interrogators imparted more than they dragged forth when they dealt with trained subjects. He had stayed with his story of the
organizzazione accademica;
at the end, he had been given expected advice.

“Go back where you came from, signore. There is no knowledge here that would serve you, we know nothing. Disease swept through these mountains years ago; none are left who might help you.”

“There must be older people in the hills. Perhaps if I wandered about and made a few inquiries.”

“We are older people, signore, and we cannot answer your inquiries. Go back. We are ignorant men in these parts, shepherds. We are not comfortable when strangers intrude on our simple ways. Go back.”

“I shall take your advice under consideration—”

“Do not take such trouble, signore. Just leave us. Please.”

In the morning, Vasili had walked back up into the hills, to the Villa Matarese and beyond, stopping at numerous thatched farmhouses, asking his questions, noting the glaring dark Corsican eyes as the nonanswers had been delivered, aware that he was being followed.

He had been told nothing, of course, but in the progressively hardened reactions to his presence he had learned something of consequence. Men were not only following him, they had been preceding him, alerting families in the hills that a stranger was coming. He was to be sent away, told nothing.

That night—last night, thought Taleniekov, as he watched the waving beam of the flashlight on the left slowly ascend the hill—the innkeeper had approached his table.

“I am afraid, signore, that I cannot permit you to stay here any longer. I have rented the room.”

Vasili had glanced up, no hesitation now in his speech. “A pity. I need only an armchair or a cot, if you could spare one. I shall be leaving first thing in the morning. I’ve found what I came for.”

“And what is that, signore?”

“You’ll know soon enough. Others will come after me, with the proper equipment and land records. There’ll be a
very thorough, very scholarly investigation. What happened here is fascinating. I speak academically, of course.”

“Of course.… Perhaps one more night.”

Six hours later a man had burst into his room and fired two shots from the thick barrels of a deadly sawed-off shotgun called the Lupo—the “wolf.” Taleniekov had been waiting; he had watched from behind a partially open closet door as the wooden bed exploded, the firm stuffing beneath the covers blown into the dark wall.

The sound had been shattering, an explosion echoing throughout the small country inn, yet no one had come running to see what had happened. Instead, the man with the Lupo had stood in the doorframe and had spoken quietly in Oltramontan, as if uttering an oath.

“
Per nostro circolo,
” he had said; then he had raced away.

It had meant nothing, yet Vasili knew then that it meant everything. Words delivered as an incantation after taking a life.…
For our circle.

Taleniekov had gathered his things together and fled from the inn. He had made his way toward the single dirt road that led up from Porto Vecchio and had positioned himself in the underbrush twenty feet from the edge. Several hundred yards below, he had seen the glow of a cigarette. The road was being guarded; he had waited. He had to.

If Scofield was coming he would use that road; it had been the dawn of the fourth day. The American had said that if Corsica was all that was left, he’d be there in three or four days.

By three in the afternoon there had been no sign of him, and an hour later Vasili knew he could wait no longer. Men had sped down the road toward the burgeoning port resort. Their mission had been clear: the intruder had eluded the road block. Find him, kill him.

Search parties had begun fanning though the woods; two Corsicans slashing the overgrowth with mountain machetes had come within thirty feet of him; soon the patrols would become more concentrated, the search more thorough. He could not wait for Scofield; there was no guarantee that Beowulf Agate had even escaped from the net being spread for him in his own country, much less on his way to Corsica.

Vasili had spent the hours until sundown creating his own assaults on those who would trap him. Like a swamp fox, his trail appeared one moment heading in
this
direction, his appearance sighted over
there;
broken limbs and trampled reeds were proof that he was cornered in a stretch of marshland that fronted an unclimbable wall of schist, and as men closed in, his figure could be seen racing through a field a mile to the west. He was a yellow jacket on the wind, visually stinging in a dozen different places at once.

When darkness had come, Taleniekov had begun the strategy that led him to where he was at the moment, hidden in a cluster of fir trees below the crown of a high hill, waiting for a man carrying a flashlight to approach. The plan was simple, carried out in three stages, each phase logically evolved from the previous one. First came the diversion, drawing off the largest number of the attack pack as possible; then the exposure to the few left behind, pulling them farther away from the many; finally the separation of those few and the trapping of one. The third phase was about to be concluded as the fires raged a mile and a half below to the east.

He had made his way through the woods, descending in the direction of Porto Vecchio, traveling on the right side of the dirt road. He had gathered together dried branches and leaves, breaking several Graz-Burya shells, sprinkling the powder inside the pile of debris. He had ignited his pyre in the forest, waited until it had erupted and he had heard the shouts of the converging Corsicans. He had raced northward, across the road, into a denser, drier section of the wooded hill and repeated the action, lighting a larger pile of dried foliage next to a dead chest-nut tree. It had spread like a fire bomb, the flames leaping upward through the tree, promising to leap again, laterally into the surrounding forest. He had run once more to the north and had set his last and largest fire, choosing a beech tree long since destroyed by insects. Within a half-hour the hills were blazing in three distinct areas, the hunters racing from one to another, containment and the search vying for priority. Fire. Always fire.

He had crossed diagonally back to the southwest, climbing through the woods to the road that fronted the inn. He had emerged within sight of the window through
which he had escaped the night before. He had walked out on the road, seeing several men with rifles standing, talking anxiously among themselves. The rear guard, confused by the chaos below, unsure whether they should remain where they were, as instructed by superiors, or go to the aid of their island brothers.

The irony of coincidence had not been lost on Vasili as he had struck the match. The striking of a match had started it all so many days ago on Washington’s Nebraska Avenue; it was the sign of a trap. It signified another in the hills of Corsica.

“
Ecco!
”

“
Il fiammifero.
”

“
E lui!
”

The chase had begun; it was now coming to an end. The man with the flashlight was within a stone’s lob from him; he would climb up into the cluster of wild fir before the next thirty seconds elapsed. Below, on the slope of the hill, the flashlight in the center was several hundred yards to the south, its beam crisscrossing the ground in front of the Corsican holding it. Far down to the right, the third flashlight, which only seconds ago had been sweeping frantically back and forth in semicircles, was now oddly stationary, its beam angled down to a single spot. The position of the light and its abrupt immobility bothered Taleniekov, but there was no time to evaluate either fact. The approaching Corsican had reached the first tree in Vasili’s natural sanctuary.

The man swung the beam of light into the cluster of trunks and hanging limbs. Taleniekov had broken a number of branches, stripping more than a few so that any light would catch the white wood. The Corsican stepped forward, following the trail; Vasili stepped to his left, concealed by a tree. The hunter passed within eighteen inches, his rifle at the ready. Taleniekov watched the Corsican’s feet in the wash of light; when the left foot moved forward a beat would be lost for a right-handed marksman, the brief imbalance impossible to recover.

The foot left the ground and Vasili lunged, lashing his arm around the man’s neck, his fingers surging in for the trigger enclosure, ripping the rifle out of the Corsican’s hand. The beam of the flashlight shot up into the trees. Taleniekov crashed his right knee into his victim’s kidney,
dragging him backward, down onto the ground. He scissored the man’s waist with his legs, forcing the Corsican’s neck into a painful arch, the man’s ear next to his lips.

“You and I will spend the next hour together!” he whispered in Italian. “When the time’s up, you’ll have told me what I want to know, or you won’t speak again. I’ll use your own knife. Your face will be so disfigured no one will recognize you. Now get up slowly. If you raise your voice, you’re dead!”

Gradually, Vasili released the pressure on the man’s waist and neck. Both men started to rise, Taleniekov’s fingers gripped around the man’s throat.

There was a sudden
crack
from above, the sound echoing throughout the trees. A foot had stepped on a fallen branch. Vasili spun around, peering up into the dense foliage. What he saw caused him to lose his breath.

A man was silhouetted between two trees, the silhouette familiar, last seen in the doorframe of a country inn. And as that last time, the thick barrels of a Lupo were leveled straight ahead. But now they were leveled at him.

In the rush of thought, Taleniekov understood that not all professionals were trained in Moscow and Washington. The frenetically waving beam of light at the base of the hill, suddenly still, motionless. A flashlight strapped to a sapling or a resilient limb, pulled back and set in motion to give the illusion of movement, its owner racing in darkness up a familiar incline.

“You were very clever last night, signore,” said the man with the Lupo. “But there is nowhere to hide here.”

“The
Matarese!
” screamed Vasili at the top of his lungs. “
Per nostro circolo!
” he roared. He lunged to his left. The double-barrelled explosion of the Lupo filled the hills.

Scofield jumped over the side of the skiff and waded through the waves toward the shoreline. There was no beach, only boulders joined together, forming a three-dimensional
wall of jagged stone. He reached a promontory of flat, slippery rock and braced himself against the waters, balancing the attaché case in his left hand, his canvas dufflebag in his right.

He rolled onto the sandy, vine-covered ground until the surface was level enough to stand. Then he ran into the tangled brush that concealed him from any wandering patrols above on the broken cliffs. The captain had warned him that the police were inconsistent; some could be bought, others not.

He knelt down, took a penknife from his pocket, and cut the webbed strap off his wrist, freeing the case. Then he opened the duffle bag and took out dry corduroy trousers, a pair of ankle boots, a dark sweater, a cap, and a coarse woolen jacket, all bought in Paris, all labels torn off. They were sufficiently rough in appearance to be accepted as native garb.

He changed, rolled up the wet clothes, and stuffed them into the duffle bag along with the attaché case, then started the long, winding climb to the road above. He had been to Corsica twice before—Porto Vecchio once—both trips basically concerned with an obnoxious, constantly swearing owner of fishing boats in Bastia on State’s payroll as one more “observer” of Soviet Legurian Sea operations. The brief visit south to Porto Vecchio had been in connection with the feasibility of covertly financing resort projects in the Tyrrhenian; he never knew what happened. While in Porto Vecchio he had rented a car and driven up into the hills. He had seen the ruins of Villa Matarese in the broiling afternoon sun and had stopped for a glass of beer at a roadside
taverna,
but the excursion had faded quickly from his mind. It never occurred to him that he would ever return. The legend of the Matarese was no more alive than the ruins of the villa. Not then.

He reached the road and pulled the cap down, the cloth covering the bruise on his upper forehead where he had collided with an iron post in a stairwell.